


The Yellow Wallpaper

by Quandisa



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon), The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Genre: Character going insane, Feminist Themes, Other, gay themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 03:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15234399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quandisa/pseuds/Quandisa
Summary: I took a respected feminist short story and made it gay. Go read the original by Charlotte GilmanA young woman is brought to a family estate for the summer on the orders of her brother and father, both respected doctors, to cure her illness. But away in the old nursery she watches the wallpaper. Is there a woman trapped behind it? And what is she doing behind there?These are her hidden journal pages.





	1. House of Specter

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Yellow Wallpaper](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/396777) by Charlotte Gilman. 



It is rare that mere ordinary people like Apa and myself secure some grand house for the summer.

A colonial mansion, a family estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be too ridiculous!

Still I do declare that there is something queer about it.

Why else should it be so cheap? And why have stood abandoned so long?

Apa is practical in the extreme. He has little patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of imaginary things.

Apa is a physician, and  _ perhaps _ —(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper)— _ perhaps _ that is one reason I do not recover faster.

You see, he does not believe I am sick!

And what can one do?

If a physician of high standing, and one’s own brother, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what can one to do?

My father is also a doctor, also highly regarded, says the same thing.

So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.

Personally, I disagree with their notions.

Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.

But what is one to do?

I did write for a while in spite of them; but it  _ does _ exhaust me a good deal—needing to hide it, or meet heavy opposition.

I sometimes think that in my condition if I had less oppression and more society and stimulus—but Apa says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel dreadful.

So I will live it alone and talk about the house instead.

The most beautiful place! It is quite isolated, standing far from the road, three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are tall hedges and walls and gates that lock with heavy clangs, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.

There is a  _ delightful _ garden! I never saw such a garden—large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long rose-covered arbors with seats under them.

There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.

There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and co-heirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.

That spoils my any chance of finding a ghost, but I don’t care—there is something strange about the house—I can feel it.

I even said so to Apa one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a  _ draft _ , and shut the window.

I get unreasonably angry with Apa sometimes. I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.

But Apa says if I feel so I shall neglect proper self-control; so I try to control myself,—around him, at least,—and that makes me very tired.

I don’t like our room one bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such gorgeous antique chintz hangings! but Apa would not hear of it.

He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another.

He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without making comment.

I have a prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.

He said we came only came here for me, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. 

“Your exercise depends on your strength,” said he, “and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time.” So we took the nursery, at the top of the house.

It is a spacious room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look over the grounds, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playground and gymnasium, I would judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.

The paint and paper look as if a boys’school had used it. It is stripped off—the paper—in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a more hideous paper in my life!

One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate, and provoke study, and when you follow the lame, uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions.

The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulfur tint in others.

No wonder the children hated it! I’d hate it myself if I have to live in this room for too long.

There comes Apa, and I must put this away,—he hates to have me write a word.


	2. The Nursery

We’ve been here two weeks, and I haven’t felt like writing since that first day.

I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.

Apa is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious.

I am glad my case is not serious!

But these nervous troubles are depressing.

Apa does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no  _ reason _ to suffer, and that satisfies him.

Of course it is only anxiety. It does weigh on me so not to do anything all day, everyday!

I meant to help to Apa,so he could find rest and comfort, and here I am a burden!

Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able—to dress and entertain.

It is fortunate Alice is so good with her baby. Such a dear baby!

And yet I  _ cannot _ so much as hold him, it makes me so nervous.

I suppose Apa never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wallpaper!

At first he was going to repaper the room, but he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to paranoia.

He said that if he gave in, I would find fault with everything and want the entire house redone.

“You know the place is doing you some good,” he said, “and really it doesn’t make sense to do a complete renovation for just three months’ rent.”

“Then let me stay downstairs,” I said, “there are such pretty rooms there.”

Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would have the cellar whitewashed for me to stay.

But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things.

It is as airy and comfortable a room as any one need wish, and, of course, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience him just for a whim.

I’m really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.

Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deep-shaded arbors, the loud old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarled trees.

Out of another I get a view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. I can see the spray of the sea as it swells and breaks on the rocks. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always think I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but Apa has cautioned me not to give way to fantasy in the smallest way. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of delusions, and that I should use my will and common sense to check the tendency. So I try.

I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the stress.

But I find the task exhausting.

It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my writing. When I get really well Apa says he will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would rather stick a bomb under my bed than let me near stimulating people right now.

I wish I could recover faster.

But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it  _ knew _ what a vicious influence it had!

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down.

I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the consistency. Back and forth, and sideways they ungulate, and those smug, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths didn’t match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.

I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! 

The furniture in this room is no worse than mismatched, however, for we had to drag it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! The children were terribly destructive. The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticks closer than a brother—they must have been determined in their hatred.

The floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed, which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars.

But I don’t mind any of it—only the paper.

There comes Apa’s wife. Such a dear girl as she is; taking care of me! I can not let her find me writing.

She is a perfect mother, and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I truly believe she thinks it is the writing which made me ill!

But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from these windows.

There is one that looks over the road, a lovely, shaded, winding road, and one that just looks off over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows.

This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.

But in the places where it isn’t faded, and where the sun is just so, I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.

There’s sister on the stairs!


	3. "debased Romanesque”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh those Romans

Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are gone and I am tired. Apa thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a week.

Of course I didn’t do a thing. Alice sees to everything now.

But it tasked me all the same.

Apa says if I don’t recover faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.

But I don’t want to go there! I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like Apa and my father, only worse!

Besides, it is such a long trip.

I don’t feel as if it was worth it to turn my hand over for anything, and I’m getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.

I cry at nothing, and weep most of the time.

Of course I don’t when Apa is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.

And I am alone nearly all the time now. Apa is often in town by a serious cases, and Alice is good and leaves me alone when I want her to.

So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the apples, and lie down up here a good deal.

I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps  _ because _ of the wallpaper.

It dwells in my mind so!

I lie here on this great immovable bed—it is nailed down, I believe—and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we’ll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I  _ will _ follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.

I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.

It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise.

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the subtle curves and flourishes—a kind of “debased Romanesque” with  _ delirium tremens _ —go caressing up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of swaying seaweeds in full chase.

The whole thing goes queerly, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction.

They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,—the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common center and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.

It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap, I guess.


	4. Clearer Indecency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Expression or madness?

I don’t know why I should write this.

I don’t want to.

I don’t feel up to it.

And I know Apa would think it absurd. But I  _ must _ say what I feel and think in some way—or else go mad!

But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.

Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much.

Apa says I mustn’t lose my strength, and has me take cod-liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.

Dear Apa! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable conversation with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.

But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was in tears before I had finished.

It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness, I suppose.

And dear Apa gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till I fell asleep.

He said I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.

He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly notions run away with me.

There’s one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper.

If we had not used it that blessed child would have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I wouldn’t have a child, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds.

I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that Apa kept me here after all. I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see.

Of course I never mention it to them anymore,—I am too wise,—but I keep watch of it all the same.

There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.

Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.

It is always the same shape.

And it is like a woman standing and playing behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish Apa would take me away from here!

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What games do you play behind walls?


	5. Moonlight and The Other Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something wicked this way comes.

It is so hard to talk with Apa about my case, because he is so stubborn, and because he loves me so.

But I tried it last night.

It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around, just as the sun does.

I hate to see it sometimes, it saunters so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.

Apa was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt unsettled.

The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to join me.

I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper  _ did _ move, and when I came back Apa was awake.

“What is it, little girl?” he said. “Don’t go walking about like that—you’ll get cold.”

I thought it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not getting better here, and that I wished he would take me away.

“Why sister!” said he, “our lease will be up in three weeks, and I can’t see how to leave before.

“The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you were in any danger I would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better. I feel really much better about you.”

“I don’t weigh a bit more,” said I, “nor as much; and my appetite may be better in the evening, when you are here, but it is worse in the morning when you are away.”

“Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug; “she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now let’s talk about it in the morning!”

“And you won’t go away?” I asked gloomily.

“Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip of a few days while Alice is getting the house ready. Really, dear, you are better!”

“Better in body perhaps”—I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word.

“My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?”

So of course I said no more about it, and we went to sleep. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn’t,—I lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately.

On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.

The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturous.

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following, it turns a back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and stomps you. It is a nightmare.

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool bending, branching out, slick, dripping and sprouting in endless convolutions,—why, that is something like it.

That is, sometimes!

There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes.

When the sun shoots in through the east window—I always watch for that first long, straight ray—it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it.

That is why I watch it always.

By moonlight—the moon shines in all night when there is a moon—I wouldn’t know it was the same paper.

At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes pools of light! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.

I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind,—that dim sub-pattern,—but now I am quite sure it is a woman.

By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.

I lie down ever so much now. Apa says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.

Indeed, he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal.

It is a very bad habit, I am convinced, for, you see, I don’t sleep.

The fact is, I am getting a little afraid of Apa.

He seems very queer sometimes, and even Alice has a peculiar look.

It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, that perhaps it is the paper!

I have watched Apa when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I’ve caught him several times  _ looking at the paper! _ And Alice too. I caught Alice with her touching it once.

She didn’t know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a low voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper she turned around as if she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry—asked me why I should frighten her so!

Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes, and she wished I would be more careful!

Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's getting gay up in here.


	6. Bewitched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dancing in the light

Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was.

Apa is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wallpaper.

I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was  _ because _ of the wallpaper—he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away.

I don’t want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week more, and I think that will be enough.

  
  
  
  


I’m feeling ever so much better! I don’t sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in the daytime.

In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing.

There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously.

It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw—not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

But there is something else about that paper—the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here.

It creeps all over the house.

I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.

It gets into my hair.

Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it—there is that smell!

Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like.

It is not bad—at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met.

In this damp weather it is suffocating. I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me.

It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house—to reach the smell.

But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the  _ color _ of the paper! A vanilla smell.

There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down. A streak that runs up and down. It goes behind the bed, a long, straight, even  _ smooch _ , as if it had been rubbed over and over.

I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Up and down and up and down and up and down!—it makes me lightheaded!

  
  
  
  


I really have discovered something at last.

Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out.

The front pattern  _ does _ move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!

Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she moves long and slow, the paper hugs the curves of her.

Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes reaches out, curling her finger.

And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.

They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside-down, and makes their eyes white!

If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad.

  
  
  
  


I think that woman gets out in the daytime!

And I’ll tell you why—privately—I’ve seen her!

I can see her out of every one of my windows!

It is the same woman, I know, for she is always stalking, and most women do not stalk by daylight.

I see her on that long shaded lane, sauntering up and down. I see her in those dark grape arbors, flitting all around the garden.

I see her on that long road under the trees, swaying along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the passion vines.

I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught in one’s small-clothes by daylight!

I always lock the door when I lounge by daylight. I can’t do it at night, for I know Apa would suspect something at once.

And Apa is so queer now, that I don’t want to irritate him. I wish he would leave me be! Besides, I don’t want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself.

I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.

But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time.

And though I always see her she  _ may _ be able to creep faster than I can turn!

I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, turning and twirling as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.

  
  
  
  


If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, bit by little bit.

I have found out another funny thing, but I shan’t tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much.

There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe Apa is beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his eyes.

And I heard him ask Alice a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report to give.

She said I slept a good deal in the daytime.

Apa knows I don’t sleep very well at night, for all I’m so quiet!

He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind.

Like he suspects me!

It only interests me, but I feel sure Apa and Alice are secretly affected by it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm, so now there's a naked lady and Zandra wants to keep her all to her self.


	7. Beds and Creeps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freedom!

Huzzah! This is the last day, but it is enough. Apa is to stay in town overnight, and won’t be out until this evening.

Alice wanted to sleep with me—the sly thing! but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone.

That was sneaky, for really I wasn’t alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight, and that villainous thing began to roll and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.

I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.

A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.

And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me I declared I would finish it today!

We go away tomorrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they were before.

Alice looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing.

She laughed and said she wouldn’t mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired.

How she betrayed herself that time!

But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me—not  _ alive! _

She tried to get me out of the room—it was too patent! But I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for dinner—I would call when I woke.

So now she is gone, I am alone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it.

We shall sleep downstairs tonight, and take the boat home tomorrow.

I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.

How those children did tear about here!

This bedstead is fairly gnawed!

But I must get to work.

I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path.

I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anybody come in, till Apa comes.

I want to shock him.

I’ve got a rope up here that even Alice did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!

But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!

This bed will  _ not _ move!

I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner—but it hurt my teeth.

Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and taunting eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!

I am getting agitated enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try.

Besides I wouldn’t do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.

I don’t like to  _ look _ out of the windows even—there are so many of those shaking women, and they move so fast.

I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did?

But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope—you don’t get  _ me _ out in the road there!

I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!

It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and be as free as I please!

I don’t want to go outside. I won’t, even if Alice asks me to.

For outside you have to crawl on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.

But here I can lie smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.

Why, there’s Apa at the door!

It is no use, young man, you can’t open it!

How he does call and pound!

Now he’s crying for an axe.

It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!

“Apa dear!” said I in the gentlest voice, “the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!”

That silenced him for a few moments.

Then he said—very quietly indeed, “Open the door, my darling!”

“I can’t,” said I. “The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!”

And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it, of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door.

“What is the matter?” he cried. “For God’s sake, what are you doing!”

I kept on rubbing just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder.

“I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Alice! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put us back!”

Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!     

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Creeps"

**Author's Note:**

> Copy paste. Hours of research. I'm still haunted by the anxious feelings imbued by this wallpaper. *crawls into a ball* Maybe one person will get it. Maybe one.


End file.
